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Spotlight on Dr Joerg Albert

26 October 2012

This week the spotlight is on Dr Joerg Albert, UCL Ear Institute.

What is your role and what does it involve?

I am a Senior
Lecturer at the UCL Ear Institute. The institute is a UCL department, which is
committed to basic research into the workings of the senses as well as
biomedical exploitations and translations of this research (with particular
emphasis on the sense of hearing, obviously). In a nutshell, its core mission
is advancing our understanding of hearing and fighting deafness.

Within that, my
lab contributes some
insights from one of the major model organisms of modern biology – the fruit
fly Drosophila. Fruit fly hearing
research is what my lab mainly does. But the path to knowledge is hardly ever a
straight line and occasionally the wayside flowers are just too beautiful not
to take a detour, and so we somehow got into the study of an animal’s concept
of time, specifically the role that mechanical senses play in the setting of
biological (circadian) clocks.

In parallel to
all of that, I am a passionate contributor to a number of teaching programmes
across UCL.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I joined UCL in
January 2008 as a Senior Research Fellow and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in
January 2011. Before 2008, I worked as a postdoc at the University of Cologne
in Germany and the University of Vienna in Austria, from where I also received
my PhD. My university studies took place in Bielefeld and Nuremberg in Germany.

Ever since my
early university studies I was interested in, and fascinated by, the mechanical
senses (and sensibilities). For my PhD I therefore embarked on a study of
nocturnal hunting spiders, which are, from a mechanosensory point of view,
perhaps the rightful kings of the animals (well, at least very legitimate heirs
to the throne).

However during my
postdoc I converted to research in Drosophila
as I realised that spiders were perfect for understanding the fundamental
questions of mechanosensation but fruit flies were better for answering them. As
a result, I have stayed in fruit fly research but retained my passion for
spiders (to return one day).

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

Pride is nothing
that comes to me easily; I guess one could say that my sense of pride is
underdeveloped. The only thing which I could sincerely say that I am proud of
is my contribution to a new method of delivering forces by means of electrostatic
actuation – this is a small but heart-felt pride. Larger, however, is my sense
of enthusiasm for biology and mechanosensory biology in particular, so most of
the time I feel very joyful about what I am doing but not exactly proud.

What is your life like outside UCL?

Is that a trick question? When stating it in a newsletter
distributed across UCL, it becomes somewhat problematic to still call it ‘life outside
UCL’!

It seems relevant to say though that my life as a UCL-based
scientist takes place at many different places outside of UCL. For example, the
collaboration with my friend and colleague Ralf Stanewsky takes me frequently
to Queen Mary University. A joint project with colleagues from USA, Belgium and
Japan involves, and requires, travelling to different countries. Organising and
attending conferences, seminars at other universities, all that is life outside
UCL – it’s just not life outside science!

Life outside science is an entirely different, if no less
tricky, question! Luckily for me, though, there is not so much to declare here.
Friends, love and family, new habits and old routines, and from time to time
re-reading one’s favourite books – just the normal human business.